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What I’m Focusing On In 2018

February 8, 2018

2017 was by far the best year of my life.

I completed Praxis, started working as a programmer, wrote over fifty blog posts, had several articles published. I learned how to consistently ship and just show up. I launched the career I want. What’s next?

While I accomplished a lot last year, I failed at some stuff too. I started some projects and quickly jumped away to start others. I got better at putting stuff out there, but I didn’t always stick with it once it was. 2018 is going to be different.

I’m focusing long-term on just a few core things. Most of these are things I’ve already been working on for a few months, but I’m writing them here to hold myself accountable.

Strengthening my skills as a developer. My job at Conversio as a fullstack developer is my biggest focus, and I spend most days and weekends getting better at our stack, which is JavaScript on the frontend and backend. (See my deep work habits below for how I measure my progress with this skill.)

Blogging weekly for 6 months. I started this the other week and will be posting every Saturday for 6 months. I want my blog to be a place where I consistently put out something new each week.

Deep work habits for 6 months. I’ve been spending at least 4 days per week strengthening my coding skills for 90 minutes. This is something I do before or after work, and practicing coding in this way helps me long-term get better at my job. I’m also going on week 6 of sticking to my rule of only checking social media at certain blocks from Friday afternoon to Sunday night, banning myself from it the rest of the week. I also have a rule where I check my texts and email just 4 times per day at certain times. I do all this so I can train myself to focus better. My entire team at work has read Deep Work and fully supports this schedule of how we all work.

During work and when you’re pushing through any hard task, the urge to go check your phone, email or Facebook is strong. Problem is, each time you do this, you teach your brain that it will never need to focus. Why would your brain ever learn to focus on hard stuff, when every time you are faced with something hard, you dart away to check Facebook?

Blogging about blockchain development for 6 months. I’ll admit, I have little interest in investing in a cryptocurrency. What I am interested in is investing long-term in valuable programming skills. For some months now I’ve been slowly learning about how programming on the blockchain works, but I’m now creating a project around this and I’ll be blogging every other week about what I’m learning. Programming on the blockchain is not only freaking fascinating, but also, I believe that most developers like me will need to understand this in the future.

I like to code because creating technology makes me feel like I’m in one of the sci-fi books I grew up adoring. Blockchain is an emerging technology so that same sci-fi feeling just gets quadrupled and leaves me fascinated. By blogging about it from a beginner’s perspective, I’ll be doing something fun that I love more than anything: learning the fundamentals of something complex and sharing it. As I’ve learned about blockchain technology, I’ve found there are about a million parts of it I don’t know and can explore: so many computer science fundamentals, how cryptography works, how software really works, etc.

Meditating. I do this every single day and plan on doing it for the rest of this year.

What are you focusing on in 2018? Message me or leave a comment below!